![]() Even if you're a "I refuse to take the bus" guy, MARTA rail gets you within a 15-minute walk of the Georgia Dome/GWCC/Philips Arena/Centennial Park, Piedmont Park, the future Georgia State Turner Field development, Georgia Tech campus, Little 5 Points, Downtown Decatur, Phipps Plaza/Lenox Square, Lindbergh, Perimeter Mall, Grady Hospital, Emory Hospital, The Varsity, Peachtree Center, Fox Theatre, The Tabernacle, Oakland Cemetery, and lots of other places of interest. The train hits many high-traffic areas of town, and the bus fills in all the major gaps. But inside the perimeter, there aren't any key places it doesn't go. well, because MARTA is a really fast and convenient way to get to the airport.Īs far as "doesn't really go to that many places" goes, I guess that's true for outside the city. MARTA ranks highly on speed/convenience on getting to the airport not because it's a less expansive system, but because. While obviously not as expansive as rail systems in NYC, Chicago, DC, SF, etc., I'm not sure why this would help MARTA rank highly on getting to the airport. ![]() This is mainly because MARTA doesn't really go to that many places. Same reason the massive parking decks at Lindbergh never fill up, no one wants to drive a long distance, park, and then ride. Driving almost an hour to North Springs and parking to head into town isn't that appealing.once you're at the NS exit you've already driven halfway to the city, screw it, might as well drive the other half. You couldn't get a more random sampling of every class and ethnicity in the country.Then again, the folks up in North Fulton probably wouldn't know this if they've never taken it.Īnd yeah, running Red all the way to Windward at least would be a huge boon, not only because of the traffic but also the change in transportation mode is far earlier. I ride the trains to class three days a week and the Red and Gold lines are a human rainbow. I will, however, state a suspicion that it may not be as big a deal as it may at first seem. Too many yokels in the boonies who still view Atlanta as an sinful den of iniquity. I was mainly referring to the complete and total lack of state funding for MARTA. The open question remains the subjective political one, is the cost of building it worth the outcome? All of these questions have answers already (or the answers can be found within a reasonable level of uncertainty). "How much will any of these cost" is, again, answered via statistical analysis. Even "where do we build it to maximize ridership?" is answered via statistical analysis. This question is already answered via statistical analysis. ![]() The question really isn't "if we build it, will they come?". In general, the empirical rule still holds, the more places a system reaches, the more likely someone is going to use it. On the question of actually lowering fares, running the system at a financial loss, and subsidizing it with tax revenue for the purposes of increasing ridership, and whether or not this is a worthy social goal, this is a subjective political question.įor the rest, though, there is a ton of data here, and other data from the hundreds of other transit systems throughout the world. The agency can also test ridership for different fares, how much a lower fare increases ridership. For trains, just compare the Red and Gold north of Lindbergh Center versus south of it. For buses this would be comparing routes with different intervals. The change in ridership versus the change in train and bus frequency can also be found by comparing the ridership of routes controlled for the other factors. We can control for those with monthly passes (who are more likely to take lots of short trips) versus those who put money on the cards, to filter out that effect. If we assume that any particular ride could have been substituted for a car ride (this is reasonable because most anyone can take an Uber) and comparing the MARTA trip time versus a car ride at that hour of day, we can find a relation between how much extra time a person is willing to spend using the system instead of just driving (or time saved when traffic is bad). ![]() This data is stupendously useful.īy comparing the lengths of trips versus the number at that length, a relation can be established between trip length and usage. They know where and when every card boarded, where and when it disembarked, whether it transferred between bus or train, and by using a proper algorithm can even make a reasonable estimate of which trips were commutes (the card will show regular use on the same hours of the same days) versus one-time uses. The agency has the data of every single Breeze card in use. ![]() It is irrational if based on pure assumptions and not on a proper mathematical model. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |